Job searching resources

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 Screen capture of the logo of SAGE Skills: Business  Highlight: Sage Business Skills 

An interactive resource designed to help students develop and practice the skills needed to transition from campus to the modern workplace. Features flexible learning tracks with self-assessments, expert videos, and virtual scenarios for self-paced learning across five modules: data analytics, leadership, entrepreneurship, organizational communication, and professionalism. 

Start with the Job Search and Interviewing, Career Readiness, and Personal Selling and Brand Management topics, but be sure to check out the other topics and skills! See this blog post for more on Sage Business Skills, and this post for details on its 2024 expansion.

 This database is also available for off-campus access by SFU alumni. 

Introduction

This guide is organized so that it moves from resources used to explore aptitudes and plan career paths at the personal level to resources used to explore the nature and future of particular jobs and occupational fields, and then to the resources targeted toward getting a specific job.

Note: the primary focus of this guide is on the job-hunting resources available via the SFU Library. For additional starting points for this topic, check out the "Other sources of information" section below.

Other sources of information

SFU Career & Volunteer Services, MBC 0300

SFU Career & Volunteer Services offers a range of services for all SFU students and recent graduates. Explore your career options and enhance your work search skills with one-on-one career advising, workshops, events, walk-in sessions, individual consultations and online services.

Drop by MBC 0300 for personal assistance from career educators and peer advisors. They also offer a variety of self-help career resources, including videos, books, pamphlets and career software for career planning and exploration and work search.

SFU Beedie Career Management Centre

SFU's Beedie Career Management Centre, available to all business students and alumni, provides resources and training to help students search for career employment. Students and alumni can access support for resume and cover letter writing, interview strategies, networking and business etiquette.

Check the CMC website for a schedule of upcoming events & workshops, career advising appointments, and job postings.

Vancouver Public Library (VPL)

Start with VPL's Career and Job Search page for resources ranging from resume-writing clinics to company and career directories.

Also see VPL's Skilled Immigrant Info Centre, especially their very useful employment guides by industry.

Discovering the self: Career planning and development

Try the following terms in the Subject section of the Catalogue using Browse Search. Note that these same terms can also be used in other library catalogues (e.g., Vancouver Public Library and Burnaby Public Library).

Exploring the world of work: Information about professions and occupations

For books & ebooks that tell you about employment prospects and the skills and qualifications which are necessary for specific occupations, try the following subject terms in our Catalogue: Occupations & Professions,

Also try searching for the name of an occupation or profession in addition to "vocational guidance." For example, Engineering -- Vocational guidance or (vocational guidance) AND (finance OR banking OR investment).

A few resources you might want to start with:

The targeted job search: Information about job-hunting and companies

Searching our Catalogue

Try the following Subject terms in our Catalogue using Browse Search. Note that these same terms can be used in other library catalogues as well.

Here are a few examples of the online books available for SFU researchers:

General job-hunting & careers information in journals, magazines and newspapers

Try these databases to search for articles about companies and career trends.

CBCA Complete
CBCA provides comprehensive coverage of Canadian news in sources such as Report on Business Magazine, Canadian Business (Online), and Maclean's. Add keywords to refine our pre-set search for recent articles on the subject of Careers.

Canadian Newsstream
Full text of many major Canadian newspapers such as the Vancouver Sun and the Globe & Mail. Also includes many smaller city papers such as Burnaby Now. Newspapers published in the city of a company's headquarters often report on topics of interest to job seekers: labour issues, expanded facilities, new contracts, etc. Try adding terms to our pre-set searches for recent articles in the Careers/Work section of several major newspapers or (more broadly) for recent articles with a subject of "Careers."

Business Source Complete
Full text for thousands of business journals and magazines in all business areas. Includes many popular business magazines from both the US and Canada such as Corporate Knights Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Harvard Business Review.

Academic Search Premier
Covers thousands of popular magazines, as well as academic journals in a broad range of disciplines, including political science, public administration, language and literature, communications, business administration, biological and medical sciences, computer sciences, education and history.

Background information on specific companies

Explore the SFU Library guide Company Information for reports and databases focused on both publicly traded and private companies. Also check the SFU Library guide to Industry Surveys for broader information on industries.

Some magazines regularly publish lists of "best companies to work for" as well as lists of largest companies in various sectors.  Here are a few samples:

Directories of companies both in Canada and abroad

Contacting companies directly to ask about potential opportunities can lead to jobs that are not posted on traditional job boards or in classified listings. Many job opportunities are unadvertised, making the hidden job market one of the most elusive ways of finding work, but potentially one of the best ways.